MACON, Ga. — The Hilton Macon, the Crowne Plaza and the Ramada Inn. The vacant 300-room hotel that sits on 1st St. has had a lot of names.
Now, it's just a tall, old, gray building, and it's easy to just walk past it.
However, the Ramada Inn was once the talk of the town.
“Downtown Macon was popping,” Karen White-Aaron, who lived in Macon for 25 years, said.
But at the site of the old Ramada, things used to be way more busy.
“The different concerts, the conferences, the restaurants at the Crowne Plaza," Shandrea Wilder said. "It was just the place to be."
Wilder and White-Aaron both work on Walnut Street next to the hotel.
“I was 18 when I moved to Macon,” White-Aaron said. “People would have concerts, movie stars would come.”
White-Aaron says not only would celebrities flock to the hotel, so would families.
“I attended a couple of weddings that had their banquets there," White-Aaron said. "It was huge. Had enough space to hold about 250 to 500 people."
Wilder's family used to frequent the hotel, too.
“They would get their finest wardrobes, their outfits,” she explains. “I do remember seeing the limousines that would ride up and down the roads with the celebrities inside of the cars. I know the Crowne Plaza would make them happy.”
They say they recommend people stay at the hotel all the time.
“When I was working at the medical center, at the time. We used to refer a lot of families that would come out of town that would come to see family members. They did stay at the Crowne Plaza then,” White-Aaron said.
However, they say the hotel started to decline in the early 2000s.
“Violence and crime started happening here in the area,” White-Aaron said. “Being across the street from it feels like it’s an empty hole here.”
In 2014, Ruby Sangha bought the building saying he wanted to improve it. He borrowed millions and later filed for bankruptcy, unable to keep up with the repairs.
A federal judge agreed to let HDDA LLC, one of the companies that lent money to the old owners, appoint a receiver.
They chose Master Innkeepers– a hotel management group that helps places like the Ramada get back on their feet– to secure the hotel, market it and sell it to someone new.
President of Visit Macon Gary Wheat says this is good news.
“With a national park coming online in the next few years, we need hotel inventory, we need smart hotel inventory, and strategic hotel inventory," Wheat said. "So, obviously having additional rooms on the market will definitely help us in attracting people and attracting groups."
Wheat says Macon is growing.
“We have studies commissioned with the Knight Foundation that says that over the next 10-15 years, we’ll go from an annual visitation of 200,000 to the park to 1.3 million," Wheat said. "Obviously, that’s a lot of visitors that we have to prepare for – having [the] infrastructure in place would be crucial.”
The downtown Macon area has two hotels, Hotel 45 and the Woodward hotel, that have a combined 100 hotel rooms. Wheat says the inn’s 300 would be ideal to have too.
“It has a lot of nostalgia for a lot of people who’ve grown up in Macon," Macon said. "To go to weddings, to proms, to going to charity functions, so it does have that sentimentality for it to a lot of people."
Wilder says it’s a chance to revitalize downtown.
“If they can bring the Crowne Plaza back and bring individuals to our city, that would be awesome to help bring up entrepreneurs in the area. We would love it,” she says.
So folks can experience happiness like Wilder's parents did.
“I want to experience what they experienced, what I saw from them and what they did, how much fun they had," Wilder said.
White agrees.
“Have it popping again, yes,” White laughs.
13WMAZ reached out to the Master Innkeeper's group, and their parent company, The Great American Hotel group to ask about their timetable on the project. We could not reach them for comment.
The previous owner has listed the hotel for $12 million.